. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. For the American Bee Journal. Honey Plants of Northern Texas. DR. WM. K. HOWARD, Secretary Texas Bee-Keepers' Association. In offering this list of native honey plants, it will be necessary to consider many plants cultivated by farmers and planters, which furnish more or less honey and pollen; but before entering upon our subject fully, we Avill offer, here, a few remarks upon pollen, the fertilization of plants, the production of honey, etc. Pollen is in appearance a small yel- low dust contained in the cells of the anthers. When viewed with the micr
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. For the American Bee Journal. Honey Plants of Northern Texas. DR. WM. K. HOWARD, Secretary Texas Bee-Keepers' Association. In offering this list of native honey plants, it will be necessary to consider many plants cultivated by farmers and planters, which furnish more or less honey and pollen; but before entering upon our subject fully, we Avill offer, here, a few remarks upon pollen, the fertilization of plants, the production of honey, etc. Pollen is in appearance a small yel- low dust contained in the cells of the anthers. When viewed with the micro- scope it appears as grains of various forms, usually spheroidal or oval, some- times triangular or polyhedral, but always of the same form and appear- ance in the same species. Externally they are curiously and often elegantly figured,with stripes, bands, dots, checks, etc. Each grain of pollen is a mem- branous cell or sack containing a fluid ' its coat is double, the outer is more thick and firm, exhibiting one or more breaks, where the inner coat, which is very thin and expansible, is uncovered. In the fluid are suspended molecules of inconceivable minuteness, said to pos- sess a tremulous motion. When the membrane is exposed to moisture it swells and bursts, discharging its contents. In some of the flowers under con- sideration in this text, the pollen grains do not separate into a dust or powder; they all cohere into masses, called pollinia, accompanied by a viscid fluid. In flowers dependent upon insects for their fertilization, there is a copious deposit of starch provided in the receptacle and disc. At the opening of the flower, this is changed to sugar to aid in the rapid development of those delicate organs which have n# chloro- phylle, wherewith to assimilate their own food. The excess of sugar flows over m the form of nectar; which is taken up by the hairy tongue of the honey bee, and conveyed by the ali- mentary tube, to the proventriculus, or crop, where honey
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
